


A Book

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs
Genre: Books, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 17:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16815214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: A brother has a walk with his sister, and gives her an unusual gift.





	A Book

It’s a good day, Tierville bright and loud. Merchants calling out their wares. a strike of red and blue among them, a face with a tattoo—a travelling merchant, their presence alone is enough to attract attention.

Among the throng a tall figure is moving. Dressed in clean though worn clothes, not much different from other people here—but something about the movement of that figure makes people follow it with their gazes. Perhaps it’s the fluid grace, like shifting sand, or maybe the back, or the line of shoulders, not hunched, but straightened. Some people think it’s a dancer, others that it’s some well-to-do merchant’s child, although there is not enough snobbishness on the face.

Another figure is moving after the first, shorter than them, hasty, gawky, a sleeve of the tunic torn—but both of them have the same eyes, their hair of the same warm shade of brown, the proud line of their nose alike.

‘Gene, wait up!’

The taller one looks at their companion with all the high arrogance of being the older one. ‘You know my free time is limited. Come on, hurry, Deve!’

‘Stupid brother,’ the shorter one mutters and follows him as the crowd closes in his wake.

The brother stops, however, at a market stall and buys something that he then shoves into his companion’s hands. ‘Here. But try not to shovel it all up right away, sis.’

She holds onto her prize with both hands like someone might snatch it—then looks down at it, and her face brightens. It’s a chocolate bar, Pleasure’s Pieces, and, to hold herself back from temptation, she stuffs it into her pocket, runs after her brother and takes his hand.

He doesn’t look at her, but he’s smiling.

‘How much longer?’

‘Until we get away from the crowds.’

It takes them a while to find a quiet place: an enclosed courtyard with a feeble red plant in the center of it and two benches.

The brother takes a seat on one of the benches, and the sister flops down beside him. ‘What is it? Gene, come on!’

He tries to keep his expression calm, but his eyes shine with delight that makes him look even more like his sister. He reaches into his tunic and pulls out a rectangular object. It’s not very big in his palms, and it’s covered with brown leather with a pattern of gradually diminishing squares pressed into it.

‘ _A book?_ ’ the sister exclaims. She sits up, hands pressed onto her thighs in excitement.

The brother smiles again. ‘Not just a book, Deve. Look!’ He opens it and moves it onto his sister’s lap.

She seems hesitant to touch it at first, but when it falls fully open she reaches to it, stroking the margins.

It is printed on a fine paper the colour of young sand— but no, it’s not printed! It’s hand-drawn, each page filled with bold patches of colour and slanting crimson handwriting. ‘You bought _Words_?’ her voice fills the courtyard and her brother’s heart with pride and warmth.

He shrugs, trying to play it off as nothing special. ‘You liked Syrtian’s exhibition, so I thought…’

She flips through the book fast, then returns to the beginning. The patches of colour, irregular, have the impressions of the pen that made them, the grooves a slight texture under her fingers. She looks up at her brother. ‘But there are only fifty copies!’ Her face is awash with fear that he might have spent a fortune on it.

He shrugs again. ‘I have my connections.’ He doesn’t tell her that there are fifty _one_ copies, and this one is made for her specifically. He doesn’t tell her that he asked his mentors for help to contact Moderation Syrtian themself. He doesn’t tell her he had spent three hours talking to the artist, and a week after that talk the book arrived to the Source.

In decades, the brother will die, and the book will remain the only physical manifestation of the sister’s memory of him.

But for now, they are looking through it together and talking over it. It is a good day.


End file.
